Chapter Text
In this life, she isn’t the sick sibling.
The person who would become Celeste had died in the hospital, she still wasn’t sure what killed her. Her head had hurt and she had vomited until there was nothing left but she hadn’t had a temperature so they hadn’t wanted to take her.
They had in the end.
It had been too late.
It had been a pointless, stupid death. But even before whatever disease had killed her she had been the sick one, the one with asthma and bursitis and nut allergies.
Now it's her older brother who lies in bed with asthma, who watches from the window.
She watches with him.
They curl up together, puzzling their way through books and playing with boards and cards.
“Don’t you ever want to go outside?”, he asks.
Celeste leans against her brother’s legs. “I like being here with you”.
Celeste knows what it's like to be the sick one. She wouldn’t let her brother deal with it alone.
XXX
Celeste is pretty sure Elizabeth Midford is the coolest person she knows in this life.
Elizabeth dances with her sword as Celeste watches, transfixed. Her hands ache.
She wants to move like that.
“Can I try?”, she begs, opening her eyes wide and tilting her head so they shine just right in the light.
“You don’t think it’s scary?”.
“I think it's amazing, when I grow up I wanna be like you and your mom!”.
Elizabeth Midford is incredible, somehow able to balance society's expectations with her own strength.
Just as grateful at tea parties as with a blade in her hand.
Celeste isn’t like that.
XXX
Her mother reads to her in this life too.
She curls up, snuggled with her brothers as their mother reads to them. When their mother leaves and puts her to bed she sneaks back into her brother's room and curls back up next to Ciel as they listen to their brother read.
XXX
She loves her Aunt An.
Sometimes, though, Celeste doesn’t know what to say. Like when her Aunt An starts telling Lizzy to be nice and polite and delicate before her lord.
Celeste hates that.
“Ciel won’t care”, she tells Lizzy after Aunt An leaves, “Ciel won’t care, he’ll want you to be you!”.
“But-”.
“Trust me”, Celeste says, “I know my brothers”.
And even with the fact that she disagrees with her aunt, An is still the closest to who Celeste wants to be.
As a doctor she could have her own income. As a doctor she might not have to marry. Have children.
As a doctor she could escape the trap that is slowly closing in around her.
XXX
A small part of her is glad she isn’t the only Phantomhive sibling who doesn’t quite fit.
It's not that Celeste means to stand out, it's just that she isn’t Victorian, or English, not on the inside.
She’s not a child either.
She had been twenty years old and American. She had been planning to move out and get a job and live her life.
She had been on track to live the life she dreamed of.
She had wanted to be a judge, a policy analyst, an activist. She had wanted to find a job that would consume her.
The life she had wanted to live, still wanted to live, was not the life of a Victorian Lady.
Sometimes she's guiltily glad she isn’t the only Phantomhive child who doesn’t fit the mold.
Ciel is the heir. He fits. Her other brother, who isn’t reborn like her but is too smart and too frail, the second son and the spare. He doesn’t fit either.
They listen, shoulders pressed close as they hear their father worry about his frailty, about her odd habits and hobbies.
About how if worse came to worse he could not replace Ciel.
They don’t even mention her.
The heir, the spare and, the mare.
Ciel might fit his role, but she looks at the brother supposed to be the spare and knows he fits just as well as she fits hers.
It's a kinship of sorts.
XXX
Celeste has always known that she doesn’t want to get married.
It’s a side effect of being both aromantic and asexual, for all those words do not exist yet. The idea of marriage is a cage, trapping her and holding her with expectations she can not fulfill.
The idea of children is worse.
Those words aren’t the only thing that don’t exist yet.
Rights for women are a century at least behind what they were. There are only so many options for women now, especially noble ones.
They are talking about engaging her to someone. She is eight years old and they are talking about who she has to marry.
She can’t look at her brothers as they listen, tucked outside their fathers door.
Instead she bolts, wedging herself into a servants closet.
I thought I’d have more time.
Celeste curls up in the closet and tries to breathe.
The door cracks open, bright light splashing across her face as her brothers slip in and curl up on either side.
“You won’t have to marry anyone you don’t want”, Ciel whispers to her, sliding on her left.
“But what if-”, she starts.
“We won’t let that happen. We’ll protect you-”.
“Promise”, they both say together.
Celeste was an adult once. Technically she is older than them. That doesn’t seem to matter as she curls up between her brothers, sobs into their arms and lets herself feel safe for the moment.
XXX
Celeste wasn’t a fan of parties.
For one, she has to wear a skirt. There was nothing wrong with skirts, not really. She just didn’t like them.
They made her feel wrong.
Luckily she was seven and even a well behaved seven year old was rarely invited to parties.
Unluckily this was one of those times.
Celeste joined her brother behind their father as Ciel darted out to introduce himself to someone.
Nope. Do not like him.
Something about Baron Kevin made Celeste want to take a bath.
XXX
Celeste knew her second family was not normal.
It's not just that they let her learn how to use swords, though that is part of it.
It's the whispered conversations that she is pretty sure she is not supposed to pick up on, the rumors at the rare events.
The glint of something she was pretty sure was a gun.
They kept her out of it for the most part, but she still picked up on the warnings.
Things were getting tenser.
XXX
The last time she sees her brothers together is their tenth birthday. She tries to hold onto even the ghost of their presence, the feeling of their hands in hers as they tried to hold on for even a few more moments-
That too fades and she is left cold.
She is seven years old, almost eight, and it is the second time she has lost her world.
You never really get used to it
XXX
The second time Celeste dies, it's a choice.
It was funny. The world was cold and clear, her vision narrowed down to the cliff ahead of her as the sounds from behind seemed to fade out.
They would not take her back.
Her brothers flash before her eyes and for a moment Celeste feels herself slow.
She doesn’t let herself stop.
There was nothing she could do for her brothers.
She was dead either way.
This way was a choice. Celeste felt the resolution steady in her heart, she would not be their example. They would not drag her back into the dark and break her slowly.
If she was going to die, she was going to die on her own terms.
Three.
Her breath burned in her lungs, acid sharpness in her throat.
Two.
Her pulse pounded in her veins.
One.
She was on open air. Free.
My win.
There was a moment of satisfaction.
Then a moment of pain.